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Training Iraqi police in Jordan criticised

Plans by US occupation forces to send Iraqi police recruits to Jordan for training have been criticised by a member of Iraq's interim Governing Council.

07 Oct 2003 06:03 GMT

US-led authority blames a lack of facilities for instructing police

Nasir Jadarji said on Monday that "huge sums" of money allocated for the training programme in Jordan should have stayed in Iraq.

"I have asked that the police recruits be trained in Iraq not in Jordan but the decision was not submitted to the council, we were only informed of it by the coalition forces," he said.

"Iraq should have been the one to take advantage of these huge amounts of money and with it could have trained many more recruits, as many as 100,000 inside the country."

Jadarji said this was his personal view but he believed other members who sat on the US-installed council shared his opinions.

Eight-week courses

Last week, Jordan's King Abdullah II said his country would train 30,000 Iraqi police and troops. Eight-week courses would be held with each one to be attended by 1500 Iraqis, he said.

The US-led occupation authority said on Friday final arrangements were being made to train Iraqi police in Jordan because it did not have enough facilities inside Iraq.

"The new facility will allow us to train an additional 1500 cadets every four weeks," spokesman Charles Heatley said.

The first batch of 500 recruits should arrive for the eight-week training course by the end of November.

According to the authority, the course will be taught by occupation forces and Iraqi police, with the aim of graduating 35,000 new police over the next two years to add to the 40,000 already on Iraqi streets.